


Time Enough at Last

by tardisly



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Drama & Romance, F/M, Post-Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 08:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11597085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardisly/pseuds/tardisly
Summary: On a cold, icy world, memories the Doctor has been missing from his mind and heart return. Now that he remembers Clara, he has one wish: to see her again before he changes. Clara must have the same thing in mind, because just as he's accepted the inevitable, time slows to a standstill and she's calling to extract him from his timestream for one last adventure.Promises break and what starts as a simple reunion turns into the adventure of a lifetime. But soon the inevitable consequences of evading the future begin to take hold, spiralling into a threat to the universe that threatens to shatter the Web of Time and all it stands for. Everyone knows they must face their raven in the end... but at what cost?AU from the end of The Doctor Falls.





	Time Enough at Last

In the valley of an unknown world of white gloom, a fierce blizzard raged, blotting out all there was to be seen. For centuries, millennia, the snow had been falling, and would most probably continue to do so for eons to come. It was one of the few places in the universe that remained totally and utterly uninhibited, and it stood to reason for it to seldom have visitors. In fact, in its vicinity there were currently exactly two foreign objects: a bright, blue box marked “Police,” and the lonely man that had staggered out from inside it.  
  
The Doctor knelt forward in the snow, memories swirling in his mind like the blizzard around him. The torrent of thought and memory unleashed by the regeneration dazed him; the ever-insistent glow of the change continued to press on, threatening to run forth no matter how hard he tried to suppress it. Desperate, he thrust his glowing hands into the snow, where the ice cooled them with a hiss. _Not yet_ , he thought. _Just not yet_. There was one more thing he had to do.  
  
He could still see the faces of his past companions in his mind, winding back and forth as if in a repeating loop. All the times they'd called for him, trusted him – and he'd been a different him, every time. They'd accepted. They hadn't forgotten. But there was one face that stood out, that affected him so deeply in this moment that it threatened to drown out all the others. The face of the one he'd forgotten... and now remembered. Clara.  
  
_Clara._ He repeated it over and over again in his mind, as if the mental mantra would somehow stop the inevitable change that surged through him. His very skin tinged with energy, every cell itching to rearrange itself, to heal. But his mind wasn't healed, he thought, not yet.  
  
Clara. A name that, mere moments ago, had been blank in his mind as a chalkboard wiped clean, had now begun to tingle with memories, emotions, experiences. A picture to go with the name. How could he have every forgotten her, all they'd been through? And now he'd die, and she'd never have known that he remembered. He'd never see her again, like he was now – the one she'd known and trusted. And he couldn't allow that, not ever, not now that it had all just come surging back with a force so strong it was dizzying.  
  
_“No!”_ Daring the universe to deny it, to change him back. Once more, for Clara. For her... For the name of someone he'd cared for so deeply he'd turned it into a song that had become a story. A story that he had told himself over and over, to forget the pain of losing her. _Just once more,_ he thought sadly, watching the snowflakes fall. _Just let me see her again._  
  
He sighed deeply, then picked himself up off the ground. It wasn't going to happen, he knew it wasn't. It was no use lying to himself, after all; he was going to die here, alone, in the snow. The regeneration process was too far gone already – the gold spanned like a ghostly sunlight from his fingertips – any moment now, it was coming –  
  
The white of the snow erupted in a burst of gold.

* * *

Elsewhere in the universe, in an entirely different point in time, Clara Oswald stood in her TARDIS and drummed her fingers against the console.  
  
She was having a moment of uncertainty, to put it lightly. There was something she'd been putting off for a very long time, and she knew it was time to face it, therefore the only logical thing left to do was do it. But the logical part of her wasn't working very well today, and as she let her thoughts wander, an entirely different idea had crept in.  
  
“Why shouldn't I?” she said aloud. The room was silent save for the slow, steady whir of the time rotor. She was alone. Of course she was alone. “What rules am I breaking?” It wasn't like she was changing time... No, that wasn't it at all.  
  
She trailed off, her fingers fiddling with the various knobs and dials of the TARDIS. Ashildr would have known what to say. She missed her terribly sometimes – when she found time to remember her, which, thought Clara shamefully, wasn't very often. Ashildr had been happy to die, had gone forth and proudly given her life to save millions of others. A good, grand, glorious death. The kind of death Clara wished she'd one day have the courage to face, even though for the moment facing her own – the circumstances of which, compared to Ashildr's, now seemed rather silly – was enough of a challenge.  
  
But, thought Clara, flipping a lever, Ashildr was gone now. No one to reign her back, to stop her if she was going too far. She was on her own, just as she'd been for years now, not counting the occasional travelling companion. (She shuddered a bit at the memory; never was she doing that again. How did the Doctor ever manage them?)  
  
Just her and her utterly reckless will, driving a time machine round the universe. Wreaking havoc, mostly. Trying to help, sometimes. But _always_ having fun.  
  
And now it was just time for a bit more fun, wasn't it?  
  
And yet she hesitated. She'd known she'd have to face it and make a decision one day, known she couldn't hold it off forever. She'd always tucked it to the back of her mind, in the corner conveniently marked “for later” that she kept promising she'd revisit, but never seemed to get round to.  
  
But she couldn't hold it back anymore. Fate was meant to be faced, and this was hers. And oh, of all the glorious things she'd done, surely this would be the best? Of all her travels, and the marvels she'd seen, surely walking back wilfully to her own death would be the crowning jewel. The perfect little bow to tie it all up with. To make herself into the beautiful, endless story that she knew existed in the Doctor's memory as a song.  
  
But, she thought carefully, taking a deep breath, it wasn't going to happen. Not now, not ever.  
  
Clara Oswald was _afraid._  
  
Fear had made her into a wonderful thing. Into someone so full of determination they'd stop at nothing to get what was lost. And there was something she'd lost, so long ago, that she'd been meaning to get back for a long while. Something so important her very existence revolved around it, because as magnificent and dead to time as she was, there was only one person to thank for her current predicament. One person who'd trapped her in it, and let her fill the moment between her dying heartbeats with enough adventures to last a century's worth of sometimes. Someone she had to, _had to,_ see again.  
  
The Doctor.

* * *

A beat. And then another. Another.  
  
Snowflakes stood frozen, like fixtures in midair, glittering over the white night. Perfectly immobile. Like stars.  
  
The Doctor blinked.  
  
He was standing, still, in the snow – his knees were muddy with it, and his hands dripping with water. Regeneration energy pooled in golden light around him, and yet it wasn't moving. It had stopped, just like seemingly everything else in this icy little world. The wind no longer blew, the cold no longer chilled, and, though he supposed it would be imperceptible to anyone but him, he could see that the stars no longer twinkled. Everything was frozen... except for him.  
  
Experimentally, he took a step back and swiped at the cloud of golden energy. It stood perfectly still, immune to his touch, almost as if it were frozen in the air like a photograph. The Doctor frowned. What in the world?  
  
And then he noticed a new sound, a terrifying one. It was possibly the most petrifying sensation he'd every experienced, because it was not a new sound, but a lack of one, that sent a chill down his spine. With a quiet shiver, he realized his hearts were no longer beating.  
  
He had the strangest sense that this had all happened before. It was oddly familiar in a strange sort of way, but he couldn't quite place it. Where was he? Was he dead? Was this what happened when you died – everything around you froze, and you had to live in it, forever trapped in a snapshot of your final moments? He ought to have regenerated. It had all been going so well – alright, he'd been resisting a little, but that was to be expected, after all – the process had clearly begun! What could ever have the power to halt it?  
  
Then he had a worrying thought. Clara. His dying wish, to see her again, might have influenced the turn of events somehow. Perhaps he was even trapped inside his own mind.  
  
As if on cue, he turned to see small figure stepping out from around the corner. It was almost as though she'd appeared from thin air, stepping through a doorway that was no longer there. Short, and slender, she was wearing a bright blue dress that jolted an unmistakable memory in the Doctor's mind. As he stared at her further, the possibility turned into a certainty and he realized that he was looking at Clara.  
  
He froze, entirely uncertain of how to act. Why was she here? Was she even real? He'd wanted to see her so badly, he wouldn't put it past his own mind to play tricks on him. She was walking toward him now, frozen snowflakes falling to the ground with her every step, leaving behind her a pathway that stood out in the white of the blizzard. He could make out her features as she approached, and, without thinking, began moving forward to meet her.  
  
Soon they were standing barely inches from each other. The Doctor stared, and Clara stared back.  
  
She was exactly as he remembered her. Not to say that he recalled a whole bunch – the better part of his memory was still fuzzy – but those bits in the diner stood out the clearest. Shoulder-length brown hair, those deep brown eyes. And her smile, her lovely smile, which she was smiling at him now.  
  
“Doctor?” she began. Her voice was quiet, and laced with hesitancy. “Doctor, it's me.”  
  
“Clara,” said the Doctor. And then he broke into a grin. “Clara!” Without thinking, he reached forward to embrace her, and pulled her into a tight hug. She hugged him back with a little incredulous laugh, then pulled back, as if unable to believe her eyes.  
  
“This is you, right? This is really, really you.”  
  
“Funny,” he replied airily, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.” He grinned. “So you're real, then? This isn't some sort of weird hallucination going on in my head?”  
  
“No,” said Clara, shaking her head with a laugh. She seemed a bit dazed. “No, although if it was, I'd say just that anyway, wouldn't I? But...” She took a breath and shut her eyes, and when she opened them she asked the most pressing question of all. “Do you remember me?”  
  
The Doctor broke into a wide smile. “Do I remember you? Of course I remember you!” He faltered a bit as he continued. This was the sad part. “But really, I never quite forgot you. I _tried_ to. I thought it was for the best, since I'd never see you again. I thought I was going to die, now, without ever seeing you again.”  
  
Clara nodded – he would say almost tearfully, had she been able to cry – and then, without any hesitation, ran forward right into his arms and embraced him again.  
  
He hugged her back, tightly, and she smiled against him; just two figures embracing each other in a snowy mountainside, tiny in face of the night around them. A night that stood suspiciously still.  
  
Clara pulled back. “God, that felt good,” she said, smiling. “I've missed you so much. So, so much. It's been so many years, and you're one of the only things that I remember.”  
  
The Doctor laughed, in spite of himself, because he wasn't supposed to be laughing. He was dying. “I can't say the same for you, of course. Except for now... It all just came back to me now, you see, right now. Just a few minutes ago. All of... _you.”_ He stepped back a little, looking at her as though drinking her in.  “You,” he said quietly. And then, on an impulse, because why the hell not, he pulled her forward and kissed her.  
  
Clara gave a little jump of surprise, but returned the kiss. Too quickly she pulled back. “Not yet,” she told him, putting a finger to his lips with a smile. “There's plenty of time for that later.”  
  
The Doctor couldn't help feeling a bit hurt. “You should be honoured,” he told her. “I don't do that with too many people, you know.” He sighed, already starting to regret it a little. “I suppose got a bit caught up, in, ah–”  
  
“–In the heat of the moment,” finished Clara warmly. “I know. I've missed you too. But, Doctor, you have to come with me now. It's very important.”  
  
“Very important,” he repeated.  
  
“Yes.” She sighed, as if she were suddenly very tired. “You just follow me, you understand?”  
  
The Doctor nodded.  
  
“Good,” said Clara, turning to take his hand. “Because you know what this is about already, don't you? You're a Time Lord. You have to know.” She stopped walking, and turned to face him. “I hope you can forgive me.”  
  
Of course he would forgive her; he'd probably forgive her anything. And he would forgive her this.  
  
Because the frozen stars, sky, snow: he saw now it could only mean one thing.  
  
She'd pulled him out of his timestream. In a Time Lord extraction chamber.  
  
And he knew with certainty there was nothing that could ever stop them now.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first proper multi-chapter story I've begun writing, so all comments are very appreciated <3


End file.
